Silicon Valley's year of reckoning

THE DAILY CRUNCH WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26 2018 By Anthony Ha Silicon Valley's year of backlash, Amazon's record-breaking holiday and history lessons for Mark Zuckerberg. Here's your Daily Crunch for December 26, 2018. 1. Silicon Valley's year of reckoning A look back at some of the most impactful stories of the year in tech news, with one big theme: In 2018,  the long-held belief that Silicon Valley is on the right side of progress was called into question, over and over again. As startups grow bigger and richer, amassing more power and influence outside of the Valley, a reckoning has played out in government and business, as we see with stories like the Google employee protests, the first self-driving car fatality and scrutiny over the links between Silicon Valley and Saudi Arabia. 2. Amazon announces a record-breaking holiday, 'tens of millions' of new Prime subscribers Amazon said its top devices sold over the holidays were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K and the Echo. Millions of Fire TV devices, Fire tablets and Kindle devices were also sold. 3. What history could tell Mark Zuckerberg Natasha Lomas argues that Zuckerberg might be obsessing over the wrong bit of history. Or perhaps he didn't study his preferred slice of classical antiquity carefully enough. 4. Two years later, I still miss the headphone port Bluetooth headphones? Whoops, forgot to charge them. Or whoops, they're trying to pair with my laptop even though my laptop is turned off and in my backpack. 5. We finally started taking screen time seriously in 2018 Please peruse this piece, if only the perfect skeleton-and-smartphone stock photography. 6. Why you need to use a password manager Nobody likes passwords, but they're a fact of life. And while some have tried to kill them off by replacing them with fingerprints and face-scanning technology, neither are perfect and many still resort back to the trusty (but frustrating) password. 7. Remembering the startups we lost in 2018 Sadly, not all startups that burn bright ultimately make it. In fact, most don't. As we wrap up this year and look forward to the next, let's take a moment to remember some of those startups we lost in 2018. Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Assistant Research Professor at Cornell University (Geneva, NY, USA) Senior Full Stack Developer at AJ Madison (Brooklyn, NY, USA) Information Security Analyst at Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Chief Information Security Officer at Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Senior Software Developer at PressCable (Anywhere) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2018 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

                                                           

Top Stories of the Day // December 25, 2018

What history could tell Mark Zuckerberg | Tesla shares fall 7.6% following price cuts in China and Elon Musk's promise to reimburse missed tax credits | Salesforce keeps rolling with another banner year in 2018 | My product launch wishlist for Instagram, Twitter, Uber and more | Four ways to bridge the widening valley of death for startups | Stock markets suffer their worst Christmas Eve trading day | Silicon Valley's year of reckoning |

THE DAILY CRUNCH TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25 2018 TODAY'S TOP STORIES: TOP HEADLINE | Natasha Lomas What history could tell Mark Zuckerberg Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg obsessed over the wrong bit of history. Or else didn't study his preferred slice of classical antiquity carefully enough, faced, as he now is, with an existential crisis... Read More… Catherine Shu Tesla shares fall 7.6% following price cuts in China and Elon Musk's promise to reimburse missed tax credits Monday was a tough day for the U.S. stock market, but Tesla shares were hit especially hard. The stock fell by 7.6 percent after Tesla cut the Model 3's price... Read More… Ron Miller Salesforce keeps rolling with another banner year in 2018 The good times kept on rolling this year for Salesforce with all of the requisite ingredients of a highly successful cloud company -- the steady revenue growth, the expanding product... Read More… Josh Constine My product launch wishlist for Instagram, Twitter, Uber and more 'Twas the night before Xmas, and all through the house, not a feature was stirring from the designer's mouse . . . Not Twitter! Not Uber, Not Apple or Pinterest!... Read More… Shahin Farshchi Four ways to bridge the widening valley of death for startups As early and late-stage funding becomes more abundant, founders and their early VC backers need to get smarter about how to position their companies for a looming valley of death... Read More… Jonathan Shieber Stock markets suffer their worst Christmas Eve trading day Twas the last trading day before Christmas, and on the trading floor, Most stocks were falling, and then falling some more, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin all the banks had called,... Read More… Anna Escher Silicon Valley's year of reckoning Tech companies have always branded themselves as the good guys. But 2018 was the year that the long-held belief that Silicon Valley is on the right side of progress and... Read More… Kirsten Korosec Alphabet spins off moonshot project Malta with backing from Gates's BEV fund Malta, the renewable energy storage project born in Alphabet's moonshot factory X, is now on its own and flush with $26 million from a Series A funding round led by... Read More… Connie Loizos Dolls Kill is raising up to $15 million for its edgy fashion brand made for 'misfits' When founder Bobby Farahi met Shaudi "Shoddy" Lynn, it was at a rave in L.A. Farahi has said he was immediately drawn to the fashion sense of Lynn, who was... Read More… Kirsten Korosec On Christmas Eve, Chevrolet drivers can track Santa from their cars North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, has been tracking Santa's progress around the globe every Christmas Eve for more than 60 years. Even a government shutdown won't prevent NORAD... Read More… Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Assistant Research Professor at Cornell University (Geneva, NY, USA) Senior Full Stack Developer at AJ Madison (Brooklyn, NY, USA) Information Security Analyst at Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Chief Information Security Officer at Los Angeles Community College District (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Senior Software Developer at PressCable (Anywhere) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2018 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107